I was recently on a loosing streak wilst playing my weekly bout of ‘Scratch and Win Bingo’. This
little activity I would do on the bus to keep my mind and hands occupied(plus I love the sheer joy
of yelling those five letters in phoenetic succession)
My stop was nearing so I stuffed my game in my pocket; but just before I stood up I noticed little
grey flakes of ‘Scratch and Win’ cover-up littering my pants and the pink bus seat.
So, after all of that my question is this!
What is the name for the covering that they use on scratch and win tickets and what is it made of?
Okay, Okay! so it’s two questions. Please help!
It’s a real bummer, brad, that your first post gets treated with so much disrespect. Here’s a real answer for you: I don’t know.
It resembles wax. I suppose it is some petroleum derivative selected for its “scrapeability” and its ability to be applied by some sort of printing device. (I’m pretty sure they don’t have elves painting the stuff on.) A guess a third criterion would be its high opacity, so a thin layer is sufficient to prevent cheating.
I don’t suppose too many people know the trade name of the substance. In fact, you’d think that it would be fairly difficult to get ahold of some, since you could, I don’t know, check your Lotto tickets and then paint them back up and sell them to your next-door neighbor or something. But you can find all sorts of things on the internet. I’ll take a look.
“The labors…are aided by…innumerable lecturers, who diffuse such a various profundity in all subjects of human or celestial science, that any man may acquire an omnigenous erudition without the trouble of ever learning to read.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne The Celestial Railroad
The only references I could find (there are quite a few printing houses that will print scratch tickets but they aren’t particularly forthcoming about their processes) called it: “scratch-off coating”. Now you know something you didn’t know before.
I suppose it could be worse. They could call it WonderGlaze or something.
In Scrabble, a BINGO is whn you play away all of your tiles (assuming you have a complete rack of seven) on one turn. When you play one, you get a 50 point bonus on top of the points scored for the play.
It is so rare that I can use my Scrabble knowledge on this board without pissing someone off…
According to the Nebraska lottery’s site, the coating on scratch-off tickets is made from some sort of latex. I guess that makes sense since it does have the same texture as scraped off latex paint.
The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they’re going to be when you kill them.
Bingo fuel means that you have exactly enough to complete whatever you are doing, no extra. For instance, if I’m on a mission off of the carrier to drop candy on the orphanage, and I need to go around a storm on the way back, I’d call bingo fuel (just enough to get back to the carrier) well before I was out of fuel, so that the refueling team could get in the air if I bolted and needed to go around. Or I might even fuel before attempting a trap just to be safe (a minimum amount, certainly not a full bag). But it’s not “I’m out of fuel”.
Chuck L.
“The intellectuals’ chief cause of anguish are one another’s works.”
Jacques Barzun
Cheers! CAL
Yeah, same in Florida. In fact, now that the long-held secret is out, a lot of other game pieces I’ve seen recently have replaced “Scratch off the shiny silver spot” instructions with “Scratch off the latex paint.”
Maybe the original patent expired and it’s now available as a generic, with a reduced co-payment depending on your insur… Oh, never mind.
Being a one-time screen printer, my first thought in answer to the OP was “it’s some kind of ink!”
Not wanting to just post that, I wandered around the web looking for ink and printing supply sites. I figured if I found someone who sold the stuff, I’d be able to pick up some technical info. I didn’t have much luck with this approach, but I did find an ink manufacturer that invited me to “ask the experts.” So I did. Here is the response I received today:
“Thank you for your interest in Flint Ink. The scratch off material is a
type of ink. Unfortunately, do to its nature, we are not able to give you
any raw material information.”
And so the answer is - ta-da! - it’s some kind of ink.
Well, I average about one BINGO a game. I’ve had as many as many as five in a game - a 615-242 victory against an opponent over the internet. The bingos I played in that game are: DANGERS, DRAFTILY, OUTLIER, REINING and MESQUITE. The latter was a double-double worth 122 points.
If anyone wants to play e-mail Scrabble with me, shoot me an e-mail! I have the Hasbro version, and you can play even if yu don’t have the CDRom if you download a small applicatioon.
What’s with that little ticket section that says you can’t take that grey stuff off it? Some sort of super secret combo number to indicate your ticket is real?
By now, I would think that some dishonest scientist would have figured out a way to “see” through the covering and deterimine the numbers. Then, with the aid of a convenience store owner, the two of them could examine entire rolls of tickets looking for big winners. Those rolls that don’t have big winners are returned to the store for the hoi-poloi to purhcase.
